


Risk Assessment

by Sandrine Shaw (Sandrine)



Category: Madam Secretary
Genre: Age Difference, Developing Relationship, Disapproving Family, Drunken Confessions, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, May/December Relationship, Workplace Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-04 18:46:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14026437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandrine/pseuds/Sandrine%20Shaw
Summary: "So, Stevie." Russell narrows his eyes. "Care to tell me why your father thinks that you're sleeping with me?"





	Risk Assessment

**Author's Note:**

  * For [afinch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afinch/gifts).



 

When Stevie steps into his office, Russell is dabbling at his face with a blood-stained handkerchief. 

For a moment she's gripped by the horrible thought that it's another medical crisis, her mind flashing back to that awful day when she kept pushing at his chest to restart his heart. It's something she still has nightmares about, that frantic, desperate race to save the life slipping away under her hands.

Russell, for his part, seems oblivious to the gloomy turn her thoughts have taken. "Come in, close the door." 

He waves her inside, impatient despite his pallor and the bruised, split lip he's sporting. If he were anyone else, Stevie would assume that he'd been in some kind of brawl, but as vicious as he gets, his weapons of choice are his wit and his sharp tongue, and it's hard to imagine him with flying fists.

With a frown, she does as she's told. "Are you okay?"

"Sure, yeah, I'm fine." 

He sits down in his chair with a huff and looks at her, eyes uncomfortably sharp, like she's a constitutional crisis he's trying to solve. She shifts on her feet, wondering if she's meant to keep standing or if it's okay to sit. Something about Russell's demeanor suggests she's in for a dressing down, but she has no idea what she's done wrong.

He lets the moment stretch too long. It takes all her willpower not to push and ask him what's going on, curiosity and anxiety mingling into a heavy ball in the pit of her stomach. 

"So, Stevie." He narrows his eyes. "Care to tell me why your father thinks that you're sleeping with me?"

Her thoughts grind to a halt, like a car hitting the brakes hard when the traffic lights switch to red right in front of it. When her brain sluggishly reboots, the first thing she realizes is that Russell was indeed in a fight, that it was _her dad_ who must have punched him. Her hands fly to her mouth to cover her gasp. "Oh my God, my dad. He didn't— Did he—"

"I told you, I'm fine," he snaps. "Henry throws a mean right hook, but I've had worse. Now, explanations, please."

Right. Stevie takes a deep breath. Despite the fact that Russell didn't offer her a chair, she steps forward and sits down – or more like, she collapses into the chair under his piercing stare. 

"I.... may have implied something that inadvertently led my parents to believe that you and me— that we're—" A helpless shrug is all she has to offer. There's no good way of phrasing it, and there's no point, really, because it's not like Russell won't know what she means.

He just stares at her, incredulous. "Why _on earth_ would you do such a thing?"

It's probably a good sign that he's not yelling yet, that he sounds bewildered and confused rather than furious, even though he'd have every right to fire her on the spot. What she did was horribly, horribly unprofessional, and she doesn't even know how to dress it in a way that makes it seem less selfish and thoughtless. 

She can't bring herself to look him in the eye as she fumbles for words. "I love my parents. They're great and they support everything I do. Except my relationships. I just— No-one I date is good enough for them. Arthur was too old, and Harrison was too complicated, and Jareth was too.... I don't know, British? And then the whole thing with Alexander... Dmitri, whatever. You heard about that, right?"

"Henry's Russian asset? What about him?"

She isn't quite sure how to comprise the entire mess that was her relationship with Alexander Mehranov and the epic fallout – complete with Russian assassins, FBI observation and her dad blowing a fuse – into a few sentences. Even weeks later, it's hard for her to be rational about it, and she doubts that Russell will appreciate her hysterical breakdown. 

Better to narrow it down to the bare bones. "We were seeing each other, and now he's _exiled to Alaska_."

"Somehow I doubt that was only because he happened to sleep with his handler's daughter," Russell comments wryly. Then he frowns, and Stevie can tell the exact moment when he remembers that her dad's real job is supposed to be a secret. "I mean—"

"Don't," she cuts him off. "I'm not stupid. I know my dad works for the CIA."

Russell waves it off like it's not a big deal. It's one of the things Stevie likes best about him – he doesn't bother to handle her with kid gloves. Even when he's mentoring her, teaching her the ins and outs of cut-throat politics, he still manages to treat her like an equal. Well, as much as Russell ever treats anyone like an equal, anyway. 

"So your boyfriend had to relocate. What does any of that have to do with me?" 

"Nothing. I just— I had a fight with my parents about the way they kept interfering in my relationships, and they make me so _mad_. I wanted to put them on the spot, and dropped your name. I didn't even mean it like that. But I guess I— I knew that it could be misunderstood, and I deliberately left it ambiguous."

Russell leans forward and pinches the bridge of his nose with his fingers, tension visible in the line of his shoulders underneath his suit jacket. If he bursts an aneurysm or has another heart attack, it'll be her fault.

She winces. "I'm really sorry?" 

It comes out too much like a question, and from the look he gives her, the undercurrent in her tone isn't lost on him. "Just not sorry enough to correct your father's mistaken assumption, I gather."

"Didn't you..." 

"He didn't exactly sit down to have a chat." The set of his jaw betrays the anger he's kept in check until now. "Look, I don't care what you tell or don't tell your parents, and I have to say, right now I'm not feeling inclined to spare Henry the headache, so do what you think you have to do. But if he barges in here and starts throwing punches again, he'll be on the next plane to join Petrov in Alaska."

Despite herself, the corners of her mouth twitch into a smile. She's sure he's joking – well, ninety percent sure, anyway, or at least eighty-five – and she's only too happy to let her parents stew for a while.

#

State functions are not an appropriate time to get drunk, but Senator Morejon's chief of staff keeps filling up her glass despite her protests and there's only so much she can say without being rude. And the alcohol does make his unending chatter easier to endure.

His hand has been resting on her lower back for the past fifteen minutes and keeps inching downwards, not quite far enough yet that it's inappropriate but insistent enough to make her uncomfortable. 

Stevie takes another sip of champagne and tries to come up with an exit plan that won't cause a scene or give Morejon a reason to turn even more hostile towards her parents. She wishes her mom was around so she'd have a convenient out, but she's at a women's rights conference in Norway. The irony isn't lost on Stevie; she can't quite contain the snort.

Gary beams at her, mistaking her reaction for amusement over the anecdote he's just shared that she's barely been listening to. "It's quite funny, isn't it?"

"Oh, yes, absolutely."

His hand is on the move again, and Stevie arches her back ever so slightly away from him.

Out of nowhere, Russell appears at Gary's side, favoring him with a narrow-eyed look. "There you are, Harry. Your boss was looking for you a while ago. He didn't seem happy."

Gary blanches, but still takes the time to correct Russell's mistake. "It's Gary, actually."

Stevie hides her face behind her glass, taking another sip as Russell gives Gary the blankest stare. She wonders if Gary receives the 'and why the hell do you think I care about your name?' message as clearly as she does or if it's only obvious to someone who knows Russell.

Gary shuffles off after giving her an apologetic smile that she tries very hard to return, but her face just doesn't want to obey. As she watches him leave, Stevie can't quite hold back the sigh of relief.

Russell raises an eyebrow. "Not just a staring problem, I take it."

She laughs a little breathlessly. "Nope. A roving hands problem too. Thanks for the save. Was Morejon really looking for him?"

"Not as far as I know. He left half an hour ago. It should keep our handsy friend busy trying to track him down." 

He offers her a wry, crooked grin, and the rush of affection she feels brings a warm flush to her face. 

"You're the best." On an impulse, she leans forward and presses her lips to his cheek. 

It's only when she pulls back and sees his expression, caught halfway between surprise and indignation, that she realizes what she's done. "Oh my God, I'm sorry." 

When she turns to set down her glass, a little too fast, her head starts swimming. Russell's hand on her arm steadies her. "How much have you had to drink?"

"I don't know, Gary kept topping up my glass." At his horrified face, she laughs. It comes out like a high-pitched giggle, loud enough to make her wince. "Don't look like that, I don't think he roofied me. I just — It may have been a little too much."

"You don't say." His tone is wry and unusually indulgent, and that warmth she felt before only increases. He gently steers her towards the exit. "Come on, let's get you home."

The cool night air hits her like a slap in the face when she steps outside. She stands and takes a few deep breaths to fend off the feeling of vertigo. Maybe Gary _did_ roofie her. Or, more likely, it was too much champagne on a mostly empty stomach. Either way, the ground is unsteady under her feet as she follows Russell to his car.

He holds open the back door and slides in after her, and she's grateful that he doesn't comment or try to help when she struggles with the seat belt. She frowns when he gives the driver the address of her parents' house.

"My dad's gonna punch you again."

"Pardon?"

"He still thinks that we— If you drop me off like this, it'll just confirm his worst suspicions." Her tongue is heavy and slow, and it's an effort to make a coherent argument. 

"I thought that was what you were going for," Russell mutters, but there's no heat behind it and Stevie can't muster up the energy to protest. The point had been to make her parents stay out of her relationships; she never meant to get Russell in trouble. He sighs and tells the driver a new destination. "You can sleep it off in one of my guest rooms. Though I doubt it'll make your parents react more kindly to know you spent the night."

She curls into her seat and fights against the onslaught of sleepiness. "One of your guest rooms? How many do you have? I used to have to room with Ali when we had guests."

His lips twitch into a humorless smile. "Since the divorce I seem to have more than I can use. So you're welcome to take your pick."

Stevie still remembers the pep talk he gave her after Jareth ended their engagement, the cheerful notion of dodging a bullet at the end of a relationship. It's obvious he doesn't feel the same way about his recent separation. He looks sadder than she's ever seen him look, somehow shrunk into himself, and she thinks she prefers him prickly and sharp and misanthropic. At the same time, though, there's an unfamiliar softness to him that makes her want to reach out.

She tightens her hand around the seatbelt to keep it still, but it's less easy to hold her tongue as the words spill from her lips before she can rein them in, a memory she can't shake and suddenly feels compelled to share: "Jareth and me broke up the day the shut-down was over. I was just on the way to England with him when you called and told me to bring donuts. You said it was up to me if I wanted to come in or not, and I realized that I didn't want to go on that trip. I just wanted to come to the office. Because I'd rather spend time with you than with him."

"Stevie —"

There's trepidation in Russell's tone, and Stevie cuts him off before the humiliation becomes too much. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything."

As the silence stretches, Stevie tries to focus on the city lights sparkling outside the window, zipping past them as the car moves through the traffic.

When Russell speaks again, he doesn't look at her. "I let you get away with all kinds of things that I'd never tolerate from anyone else, and the whole 'you saved my life once' excuse will only fly for so long."

It's a weirdly ambiguous statement. Stevie frowns. "Is... that a good thing?"

"Hell if I know." 

She doesn't know what to say to that, so she doesn't say anything, but the quiet that fills the car is soft and unobtrusive, like a comfortable blanket. Relaxing further into the seat, she gives in to the temptation to slump down and rest her head against Russell's shoulder, tentatively at first. She expects him to tense and pull back, so when he shifts she's ready to apologize and move away. Instead, his arm curves around her shoulders, the fabric of his suit jacket soft and cool against her bare skin. It's... nice. She hides her smile in his jacket and feels his body rise and fall in time with his breathing.

The struggle to keep her eyes open becomes harder and harder to win, and somewhere between one red traffic light and the next, Stevie falls asleep.

#

She wakes in the guest room with a pounding headache and a stale taste in her mouth, grateful for the glass of water and the bottle of Advil ready and within easy reach on the nightstand.

She's still wearing last night's dress, the satin creased and rumpled beyond repair (Alison will _murder_ her), her shoes placed next to one another on the rug, way too neatly for her, and the idea that Russell took off her heels and put her to bed is at the same time embarrassing and endearing.

It's grey and dark outside, but when Stevie switches on her phone, she realizes it's past noon already and she's missed two appointments this morning. There's a text from Russell telling her that there's breakfast down in the kitchen and to lock the door when she leaves. 

It sounds — She isn't sure how it sounds. Almost carefully neutral, and at the same time lacking the snappy, commanding tone of Russell's usual texts. He must have switched the phone off so she could sleep in, and she's not sure what to do with that either, Russell being kind. 

Her memories from last night are a little fuzzy, but she still remembers his words in the car. She remembers that she thought then that it was a response to her imprudent TMI about her break-up, but now that she thinks about it, she realizes that it was probably an admission, an odd kind of quid pro quo ( _I like you too, despite myself_ ), Russell Jackson style.

#

Elizabeth's voice is loud enough to be heard through the closed door of Russell's office.

"I don't care about your late midlife crisis, Russell, but _Stevie_ , really? You and I both know she's way too young and too pretty and too nice for you." 

Stevie winces. Her mom isn't yelling, just... arguing very loudly, and without either the diplomacy skills she's (in)famous for or her usual amount of tact. 

Stevie knows how Russell gets when he's cornered, lashing out like a vicious, poisonous animal, so she expects him to blow right up her mom. To her surprise, he remains unruffled and cool, his voice carrying across muffled and so quiet that she has to listen closely to hear what he's saying.

"Elizabeth, you know I respect you and your work, but I don't know what gave you the impression that I was looking for your approval. This doesn't concern you."

Unsurprisingly, it's nothing her mom wants to hear. "It doesn't concern me? This is _my daughter_ we're talking about."

The headache Stevie successfully fended off earlier threatens to return. She doesn't really want to hear the rest of the conversation, turning on her heels just as Russell tells her mom that Stevie is her own person and old enough to make her own choices, the rush of affection from last night fluttering like butterflies in her stomach.

She almost runs into Adele, who shoots her a compassionate look. "Secretary McCord's been in there for twenty minutes, yelling at Russell. I'm surprised he hasn't kicked her out yet."

Stevie wonders if she knows what this is about. She's still trying to think of a way to test the waters when Adele hands her a letter. 

"Russell said to give this to you," she says, and all at once Stevie realizes that the pitying gaze wasn't about her mom at all.

#

"I can't believe you cast me off to Dalton."

Russell looks up from the stack of documents spread out on the desk in front of him. He puts down his glasses and rubs his eyes. "What is it with members of your family thinking they can barge in here at any time and yell at me?" There's an amused undercurrent to his tone beneath the annoyance, and Stevie would appreciate it if she wasn't so damn mad, or if she hadn't spent the past half hour hiding away in the bathroom, crying and punching the stack of ridiculously fluffy white towels that seemed to sit there mocking her.

"Well, you could fire me, I guess, except you already did." She pointedly waves the letter at him. 

What smarts the most is that he had Adele hand it to her, that he didn't even bother to do this in person, and even though she knows nothing can change Russell's mind when he's already made a decision, she's hoping confronting him will at least make him feel guilty about the way he handled the matter. 

He rolls his eyes and leans back in his chair, utterly unrepentant. "Oh, don't be so dramatic," he scoffs. "I didn't _fire_ you. I promoted you to the highly coveted position of an intern to the President of the United States of America. There are about three dozen people working around here, most of them in higher and better paid positions than yours I should add, who'd be groveling at my feet for an opportunity like this."

Stevie deflates a little because he's not _wrong_ , and yet— "It still... feels like you're punishing me."

"Well, I'm not. You do great work, and it pains me to admit that I've come to rely on you so much that it'll be difficult to replace you. So if anything, I'm punishing myself. But it has to be done."

"Is this because of last night?" It's probably not a question she should be asking, but she needs to know if her behavior at the function and after caused her to lose a job she happened to genuinely love.

Russell spends a long moment just looking at her, probably contemplating whether to answer her question and how, and she almost tells him to forget it when he finally replies. "It's because this is the White House, and we have a bad history of politicians having sex with interns."

Despite the somber mood, she's tempted to make a joke about how her mom would never allow her to keep a dirty dress in her wardrobe, but she seriously doubts that Russell would appreciate the comment. Besides, it's hardly relevant, is it? She frowns. 

"But we're not—"

Russell looks down at his desk and rights the pile of papers meticulously, as if it'll upset democracy if one of the files is slightly askew or any distraction was good enough to delay meeting her eyes for a moment longer. When he does look up, at last, his expression is hard to read. 

"Stevie, look, you told your parents that we were involved, and then you admitted that you broke up with your fiancé because of me, and you kissed me in a room full of senators and lobbyists. I don't want to be presumptuous, but it's my job to evaluate risk factors and contain them. And the way I see it, this'll go one of two ways. Either it'll blow up in our faces, or we'll take this further and then it'll blow up in our faces. Either way, I'd rather not add fuel to the fire by being your direct superior when it happens."

He really _is_ treating this matter like a constitutional crisis. Stevie imagines him sitting awake at night, going over worst case scenarios and possible strategies to avoid them, that familiar frown on his face that she's seen so often these past few months. It's a weirdly endearing thought. 

"I'm a risk factor, huh?" she asks. The joke is a little brittle, but it's enough to lighten the heavy atmosphere in the room.

Russell huffs. "You're a menace."

Even though the way his lips twitch suggest that he's not serious, Stevie feels the need to apologize. "I didn't mean to cause any problems for you."

"You're not causing problems."

"My mom was in here not an hour ago yelling at you," Stevie says, baffled by his denial.

He waves it off. "Elizabeth comes in here four days a week to yell at me about something or the other. The other days, I'm at her office yelling at her. It's kind of our thing." 

He's trying to make light of it, but Stevie knows that it's a whole other thing fighting with the Secretary of State about foreign policy and fighting about whether he's good enough to date her daughter. Stevie doubts that Russell wants to talk about it, though, so she puts on a smile that's only a little bit fake and teases, "Should I be jealous?"

"What? No! I don't—" It's worth seeing Russell splutter, and her laughter becomes real.

"Get out. I have work to do and you're being distracting."

She holds up her hands in a gesture of surrender. "Fine, I'm going." A wave of nostalgia overcomes her, and she remembers the odd mix of relief and elation that morning when she was about to leave with Jareth and saw Russell's text. "I'm going to miss working with you."

"You'll still be working with me," he assures her. They both know it won't be quite the same – that's the whole point, isn't it? – but it's a comforting thought anyway.

She already has her hand on the door handle when Russell calls her back. 

"Stevie." She turns back towards him. "Dinner, tonight? I mean, unless you're busy."

He's giving her an out, she realizes. 

Because up until now, everything that happened could be brushed off as a joke, harmless teasing that never went anywhere, and Stevie knows with absolute certainty that Russell wouldn't hold it against her if she decided she wanted to leave it at that. She'd go work for Dalton, and she'd run into Russell at least once a day, and everything would be just as it used to be. No hard feelings, no lingering innuendo, no sharp-tongued teasing just this side of too familiar. 

She takes a moment to take stock, before deciding that she doesn't want that. She's ready to upset the status quo, wherever that's gonna lead them, even if it'll blow up in their faces like Russell predicted. "Sure. Text me the address and I'll meet you there. Or if you feel like pissing off my parents some more, pick me up at eight?"

It's only now that the tension in his shoulders relaxes that she notices how apprehensive he was about her answer.

"I'll be there," he says, with a twinkle in his eyes that makes her think he likes the idea as much as she does. "Barring diplomatic incidents."

End.


End file.
